common ideas and aspirations. And these he had but to look around to behold. He felt himself a citizen of an immense over-nation, of a vast world of federated hopes and interests.

When the plan for this visit had taken shape in his own mind, he consulted his friends, Judge Story, Prof. Greenleaf, and President Quincy, who were not at all well affected to it. The first two thought it would wean him from his profession, the last one that Europe would spoil him, “send him back with a mustache and a walking-stick.” Ah! how little did they comprehend him, how hard to understand that this young and indefatigable scholar was only going abroad to cut himself a club for the Herculean labors of his ripe manhood. He went, saw, and conquered. He saw the promised land of international fellowship and peace, and conquered in his own breast the evil genius of war. He came back proud that he was an American, prouder still that he was a man.

The downfall of the Whigs of Massachusetts, brought about by a coalition of the Free Soil and the Democratic parties, resulted after a contest in the Legislature lasting fourteen weeks, in the election on April 24, 1851, of Charles Sumner to the Senate of the United States. He was just forty, was at the meridian of the intellectual life, in the zenith of bodily vigor and manly beauty. He attained the splendid position by sheer worth, unrivalled public service. Never has political office, I venture to assert, been so utterly unsolicited. He did not lift a finger, scorned to budge an inch, refused to write a line to influence his election. The great office came to him by the laws of gravitation and character—to him the clean of hand, and brave of heart. It was the hour finding the man.

As Sumner entered the Senate the last of its early giants was leaving it forever. Calhoun had already passed away. Webster was in Millard Fillmore’s cabinet, and Clay was escaping in his own picturesque and pathetic words, “scarred by spears and worried by wounds to drag his mutilated body to his lair and lie down and die.” The venerable representative of compromise was making his exit from one door of the stage, the masterful representative of conscience, his entrance through the other. Was the coincidence accident or prophecy? Were the bells of destiny at the moment “ringing in the valiant man and free, the larger heart, the kindlier hand, and ringing out the darkness of the land”? Whether accident or prophecy, Sumner’s entrance into the Senate was into the midst of a hostile camp. On either side of the chamber enemies confronted him. Southern Whigs and southern Democrats hated him. Northern Whigs and northern democrats likewise hated him. He was without party affiliation, well nigh friendless. But thanks to the revolution which was working in the free states, he was not wholly so. For William H. Seward was already there, and Salmon P. Chase, and John P. Hale, and Hannibal Hamlin. Under such circumstances it behooved the new champion of freedom to take no precipitate step.

A smaller man, a leader less wise and less fully equipped might have blundered at this stage by leaping too hastily with his cause into the arena of debate. Sumner did nothing of the kind. His self-poise and self-control for nine months was simply admirable. “Endurance is the crowning quality,” says Lowell, “And patience all the passion of great hearts.” Certainly during those trying months they were Sumner’s, the endurance and the patience. First the blade, he had to familiarize himself with the routine and rules of the Senate; then the ear, he had to study the personnel of the Senate—and lastly the full corn in the ear, he had to master himself and the situation. Four times he essayed his strength on subjects inferior to the one which he was carrying in his heart as mothers carry their unborn babes. Each trial of his parlimentary wings raised him in the estimation of friends and foes. His welcome to Kossuth, and his tribute to Robert